Chemical Safety and Morphs with Brian

Today at the Pacific Shark Research Center we started out with a presentation from UROC intern Justin, who presented on the family of Etmopteridae (Black Dogfishes and Lanternsharks). I learned that Etmopteridae lack anal fins and also have two spines on the two dorsal fins. Justin’s other presentation was about Apristurus (Catsharks). After the presentation the new interns (me!) needed to learn about how to take morphometrics and study differences between shark types, so Paul and the group went to the storage and took out different kinds of Catshark and Dogfish. After learning how to take morphometrics of the sharks, some of the interns left for the day; others stayed so that Paul could look at their abstracts for the research papers that they were writing. I stayed because I wanted to see if there was anything I could of helped with.

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After the morphometrics, we changed out the formalin and ethanol in our warehouse storage bins. First we took the formalin bin to the hazardous waste center to properly dispose of the chemical, wearing hazmat suits and respirator masks to protect our health. After the formalin was disposed the bin was then cleaned thoroughly. Paul and I then replaced old ethanol preserving Thresher shark and a Salmon shark specimens with new, unused ethanol.